For folks educated way past their raisin' ... "Praecipitatum verius quam editum" --- By the Woulda-been Poet Lariat of the Shoulda-Been State of Sequoyah.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Pissing away the First Amendment

Thanks to an Anonymous for pointing out the real news of yesterday's hearing on Alito, while the rest of the freest, and most self-absorbed, press in the world concentrated on Kennedy's tirade and Alito's wife crying!

Interesting NYTimes editorial Thursday on Alito hearings:

Some commentators are complaining that Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearings have not been exciting, but they must not have been paying attention. We learned that Judge Alito had once declared that Judge Robert Bork - whose Supreme Court nomination was defeated because of his legal extremism - "was one of the most outstanding nominees" of the 20th century. We heard Judge Alito refuse to call Roe v. Wade "settled law," as Chief Justice John Roberts did at his confirmation hearings. And we learned that Judge Alito subscribes to troubling views about presidential power.

I don't understand the headline. I assume you mean to lament the fact that the things said in the editorial were not picked up by the MSM. There is nothing new in the editorial that even a casual observer hasn't heard before, so let me phrase it another way - "I don't get it."

One point I would like to discuss is this nonsense of three equal branches of government. I believe that if you look at the text of the US Constitution, you will see that the Judicial Branch is set-up to be the weakest branch. The Legislative Branch is set-up to be the most powerful. Were Congress to decide to limit the Executive Branch's power, it (they) could. Congress also has the power to declare laws outside of the Supreme Court's realm of power. People need to look to legislators to limit the president's power, not judges.

As an aside, if Alito is confirmed and Roe v. Wade is overturned, I forsee a win-win situation. First, the legal killing of children will be stalled for a while. The second victory will be the return to talk of State's Rights. Perhaps then, ER, you won't think I'm so far out of the mainstream.

My point was that the MSM IS pissing away the First Amendment by reporting fluff and bullshit.

Whether or not the stuff that came out of the committee hearing yesterday was "new" or not, it was the "news" of the day, by definition, because that's what came out of the committee -- and that should have been the bulk of what the reporting was about. But it wasn't.

I believe in three co-equal branches of government, myself, no matter what the Founders thought they wanted. You want to go back to 1803 and undo Marbury vs. Madison. I don't.

As for abortion, what will happen if Roe vs. Wade is overturned is this:

Yes, it will go back to the states, and the anti-abortion people will, too. They will not rest until either every state has outlawed it, or Congress, with Roe overturned, decides to try to outlaw it.

Note the above is detached analysis, as I was not weighing on what I WANT to see happen.

(What I want to see happen is more enery put into persuading women not to have abortions; and more resources put into support for children born to mothers who can't support them. I oppose abortion. But, as a man, it is not my decision, period. As I've said before, were my Bird to desire an abortion, I would try hard to persuade her to not have one; I would want to adopt the critter myself if need be; but if you, or anyone else, got into her head, or her womb, and dared try to make the decision for her, you would incur the wrath of a suddenly unreconstructed hillbilly redneck turned feral.)

Hello ER, Its been awhile, I have been kinda in the blahs with end of year stuff.So I guess my first comments will not be in agreement....:) imagine that! by the way pray for rain this drought over the last 3 years is really catching up to us. Anyway here goes and hope you had a great holiday.

"God, grant us one more First Amendment -- we promise not to piss it away."

I think we have "pissed" away the first amendment because of other reasons;

God didn't give us the first amendment to grant child pornographers the freedom to molest, show, & sell pictures of our children.God didn't give us the first amendment for an excuse to murder our unborn.God didn't give us the first amendment to keep us from using the name of His son Jesus Christ in prayer asking for help to guide our governing decisions.God didn't give us the first amendment to excuse the decline in immorality we so readly except as freedom.

BC-Congo-Constitution-Glance,0195  Key points of Congo’s new constitution  With BC-Congo-Constitution KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — Key points in Congo’s new constitution, approved by voters after a Dec. 18 referendum: —President limited to two terms of five years each. Minimum age for presidential candidates lowered from 35 in transitional constitution to 30 — allowing incumbent Joseph Kabila, a 34-year-old who inherited his father’s rebel army, to seek re-election. —Parliament elected for five years. —Prime minister nominated by the president from the party with parliamentary majority. —Country divided into 25 semiautonomous provinces, each with a provincial assembly elected for five years. Provinces have budgetary authority over health, education and public works, keep 40 percent of revenues generated from taxes and exports of minerals, timber and other natural resources from the province. Remaining 60 percent goes to national budget. —Judiciary is independent. —Same-sex marriage banned. —Women have equal representation in government and equal access to administrative positions.

ER said: "looky what they did in the Congo.."I don't get the long reference to the Congo's new constitution. Are you suggesting we need to kill off 20% or so of our people so we will be desperate enough to start over and hope it works like the Congo?Are you saying that the most problematic genocide of the past decade hasn't even been notice by our press? What's with the Congo/Zaire reference?

You know the abortion question is really more like the Dred Scott question than one of privacy like the court has said. It is a question of property and who owns what. Aman owns all of his sperm and a woman owns all of her eggs, true? When a man gives a woman his sperm and it enters the woman's egg and it is fertilized then neither of them yet own the child. The child owns the mother until born in order to protect itself. The womb is the child's property and cannot yet be seperated from the mother. Upon birth then the child reverts to the property of the man and woman. Seems simple to me. The man is the property owner of it all, and that is why Roe v. Wade must be overturned at all cost.

Pero, I despise PETA. One of my most prize posessions is a framed letter to the editor of the paper I worked at in Texas, from a PETA minion giving me shit for writing story that she perceived as unduly positive toward the cattle industry. I was the farm-ranch editor. It was in Texas. My dad was a cattle raiser. Everybody I'm kin to is kin to a cattle raiser. Ha ha ha. Beef! It's what's for dinner. The West wadn't won on salad!

Drlobojo, I meant not much with the Congo thing, other than as a jab at Rem, who is always wanting things to be like they were post-Marbury vs. Madison. I thought he might rather we just start over.

Anon., that's an interesting theory. Way the hell out there. But interesting. The law that should apply is this one:

Your rights begin where my chin (or nose) begins.

Society's rights end where a woman's, or a man's, body begins. And I freely admit this inconsistency: Society's responsibility begins where the woman's body, or man's ends. It's that whole it-takes-a-village thing.

What about the right to "Life" as guaranteed by the constitrution before we even get to the Bill of Rights?

The Right of the Mother to control her reproductive processes ends when it causes the destrustion of her un-born child's body, in my opinion.

I am all for a woman's right to chose whether or not to have a baby.

But the time to make that choice is while her pants are still on.

But the reason that the "Abortion" issue is such a controversey is because the debate has been snatched away from the American People by the Courts. It is a "States Rights" issue, whichever way the States fall on it.

As far as the First Amendment goes, the Media is free to print or report whatever they deem Newsworthy. If they want to report fluff and bullshit, that is their right.

No one in the Government restricted them from reporting fluff and bullshit, so there is really no Constitutional issue here.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with what they do with this Freedom has nothing to do with anything, ER.

If I understand E.R.'s position, I think it's akin to the statement that "those who will not read are no better off than those who cannot read." Only in this case, it's writing. Or more accurately, reporting. If we "in the media" fail to do our job with vigor, we may as well not have the First Amendment.

Alas, however, these days many editorial decisions are made in focus groups where randomly selected people are fed potato chips and M&Ms and asked if they read certain parts of the newspaper. Kind of ass-backwards planning.

Mark - Is it strict construction to dismiss an entire article of the Bill of Rights, the Ninth, as "an inkblot?" What rights do YOU think are implied in the Ninth?

On Roe vs. Wade: it's an intellectually rotten decision. The even parsing of a graduated series of "a woman's right to abortion" in even trimesters is one clue how artificial the distinctions were. They may have reflected rough common sense on the rights of the embryo and fetus weighed against the mother's, but it's hardly a ringing reaffirmation of some kind of blanket right to choose an abortion; it's the kind of middle-of-the-road kludge of a social construct that should be the result of political decision, not a court's overreaching of the Constitution, and (I agree) this probably shold be done on the state level or by another amendment, since the 10th Amendment isn't an inkblot either.

Mark, I don't know whether that quote is accurate,l but since I KNOW you don't do any real real research, by your own admission, if you're going to use such supposedly accurate quotes here, I'm going to pretty much you require you to citre or otherwise docukent them, because your methodology has been proven to suck.

Tug, no offense, but I hereby assert that because of 20 years of experience in using the damn thing professionally, I have, and others who frequent this joint, have a, shall I say, more authoritative opinion on the "press" segment of the First Amendment.

And Trixie's right in her interpretation of my thinking. Why have the damn thing, the press part, if most of the press is beholden to ignorance, not to mention corporate ownership that self-defangs.

The Anon. is closer to the truth that some might think, though. Maybe abortion IS a property rights issue, and I, myself have thought of the rabid defense proffered for it as akin to the defense of slavery -- because the thinking IS somewhat the same: "This fetus (slave) is MY property, and I will do with it what I please."

The difference, and this will always, always be the difference to me: I don't care where "life" begins. The rights of the clearly living supercede the unripe "rights" of the "unborn."

I swear, if men were the ones who had babies, this would never, ever have been an issue.

ER said:"...if men were the ones who had babies, this would never, ever have been an issue."Got that shit right. If men were the ones having the babies the species would died out on the Danakil desert 6 million years ago and there would be no one here to care.

About Me

A Yankee editor friend called me an "erudite redneck." That about sums it up. WHAT I'M READING .....
GORE VIDAL, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated" (New York: Thunder's Mouth, 2002).
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS, "The Last Temptation of Christ" (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960).